[hionwind]

Congratulations to the green alliance for a well-deserved win at the Sacramento Regional this year. The alliance of 2489, 701 and 3189 had a great balance of firepower and defensive ability but you won the regional with teamwork and consistency.

I was personally very excited to see Circuit Breakers (our second pick for last year's regional win and a huge asset to the alliance) performing at such a high level. Your team has come a long way from last year. Work on getting that drive-train a little faster and you will be a serious threat at nationals.

I was also ecstatic to see team 701 win their first regional. It does not seem that long ago that Doug Green and team 701 ushered our team into the FIRST program. They were the epitome of Gracious Professionalism and helped us build our robot that first year when we were struggling to even put together a drive train. Since that time, our team has grown and achieved success beyond what I had ever imagined but we are eternally grateful to Doug and his team for giving us the inspiration and this win has been a long time coming for them.

Citrus Circuits would like to extend a huge thank you to all of the organizers of this year's event. We had a blast and it was a major roller-coaster for us. In case anyone is interested in our story, here is a quick re-cap of what happened with our team.

On Thursday, our new shooter ( redesigned from Madera) was not performing the way it had in the shop. By the end of the day, we had decided that the custom gearbox was geared too low and did not provide the necessary speed for a good shot. Two of our team members built a new gearbox overnight (they had it finished by around 3:00 a.m.). We did not have enough time to mount the gearbox Friday morning so we waited until there was a good hour an a half between matches which happened between our 4th and 5th matches. We did not have time to test it in the pit before our 5th match so we went out on the field anyway. Unfortunately the motors had been wired in opposition so the shooter didn't work in that match either. A quick trip to the practice field and we had it working like a charm so finally in our 6th match we were shooting well.

Things continued to go well for us throughout the remaining qualification matches and it was especially exciting to team up with 1662 in match 82 and post the high score of 162. We were thrilled to be selected by 1662 for the finals but, unfortunately, things did not continue to go well for us. Right before our first quarter-final match, we decided to grease the shooter gearbox. This caused our shooter to run slower and resulted in missing all of our autonomous shots. Then, in the second quarter-final, an ethernet cable (left on the robot after removing our camera) became lodged in the drivetrain and prevented us from driving effectively.

We were disappointed that we couldn't support 1662 as we would have liked but that's the way it goes sometimes. We learn from our mistakes.

Again, thanks to all the participants in this year's Sacramento regional. 1678 had a blast and we are very excited about nationals.